Soda Pop Soldier

by Nick Cole

We sit in silence finishing our new beers until the clubs come. Four strips of bacon, white moist turkey, avocado, tomato, and crisp lettuce with Swiss cheese and some sort of mayonnaise that tastes like real mayonnaise or what I imagine real mayo to actually taste like. Thin-cut, salty garlic fries, piping hot, pile up in the center between the quarters of the sandwich. The bartender places a silver serving boat of ketchup and another of cold Roquefort dressing in front of us.

  I’m wondering, briefly, if he’s just buying me lunch before he tells me to get lost. Or has me ejected from an aircraft that won’t land until Paris.

  “ColaCorp’s almost out of the game,” he remarks between mouthfuls. He chews big bites, slowly. Every so often, he dips a wad of french fries into the Roquefort dressing. Then he takes a pull from his tall draft beer in the frosted schooner.

  “Tonight will probably be our last match,” I continue. “If we lose, we’re out of competition. ColaCorp cedes all North American advertising, and I think some pretty big Chinese revenue space.”

  “You’ll lose a lot more than that,” Big Gorilla interjects. “India’s a huge market for ColaCorp. With ColaCorp’s contracts for advertising, WonderSoft would dominate and push JindyPad completely out of the market there. That’s big-time money.”

  I dip a fry in the ketchup and eat it, chewing for time. Finally I confess the obvious. “Then you know more about it than I do.”

  He chews, dips a fry, and drinks again.

  “I’m just letting you know what you have to lose. That’s all,” he grumbles.

  The blue Pacific stretches away at the window beneath us. It’s a great sandwich. The tomatoes taste summer fresh. The turkey is moist. The avocado is like butter, and the bacon is masterfully crisp with just that hint of salty fat. The french fries are hot, salty, and topped with chopped garlic so raw it burns as you chew.

  I will remember this sandwich forever.

  “So . . .” I pause again, gathering myself for the biggest pitch, the only pitch in fact, the most important pitch I’ve ever made. “Here’s the inside info. We’re not gonna lose. In fact, we’re going to win so big that WonderSoft might actually lose the entire war.”

  He smiles briefly. So briefly it didn’t even happen.

  “You’re going to have to tell me how that could ever happen. Odds are 63 to 1 as of five minutes ago, against.”

  I put down my sandwich and push the plate to the side. I lean slightly closer.

  “WonderSoft is going for the death blow,” I whisper. “They’re going to use all their assets. We kill all those assets, we rack up enough points to claim a theater victory in one round.” I lean back, then move my plate back in front of me and pick up the next quarter of that heavenly sandwich. “Commitment is going to kill them.”

  “My feeds indicate you’ve been successfully losing every match. What’s going to be different about this one?” asks Big Gorilla.

  “First of all, WonderSoft always plays it safe, never commits too many assets to any one objective. Thus, if they take casualties, they don’t lose too many points. Second, they have a spy being run by a man named Faustus Mercator. He’s the one behind WonderSoft’s victories and I’m betting he’s placing a lot of money out there in the big whatever for the win. I think that means he needs a payoff and soon. He wants to win next time, decisively and finally, and the only way to do that is to use everything they’ve got.”

  Big Gorilla finishes his sandwich. He reaches across the table to my plate and picks up my last quarter sandwich.

  “So how are you going to give me a win?” he asks once he’s started chewing my sandwich.

  I’ve got him. I know it. Why? Because he hasn’t had me thrown from the plane yet.

  “I’m going to find that spy,” I say. “Then the spy is going to tell me everything he or she knows.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll misinform Mercator’s team and set a trap. When the match goes down, we’ll go for broke. Kill as many units as possible and go for a theater victory. We get that, and WonderSoft loses. In fact we’ll actually pick up their market share by 30 percent. The rest goes back into the pool.”

  “My sources tell me ColaCorp has to buy in big for that to happen. Are they going to?”

  I don’t know.

  “My research assistant just came through with this . . .” He’s had his own personal CloudFeed on the whole time, which has been sending him info as we talk. He probably never turns it off. To him, information is power. Power is money. “WonderSoft is upping their hunter-killer squadrons and buying SmartArmor for their heavy troops. It seems they’re buying in big. ColaCorp on the other hand . . . nothing.”

  I have half a plan. It’s not a whole plan, but I feel it begin to take shape as I talk. It’s something I’ve been thinking about: a way to definitely beat WonderSoft—the only way to beat them. It’s not really even a way. It’s a strategy. A chance we have to take. But sometimes that’s all you have. So . . .

  . . . I go with it.

  “Combat modifiers. Do you know about those?” I know he does. But we’re playing a game. It’s what we do. It’s what I’m good at. He bites.

  “An hour before the game,” he begins. Almost lecturing me. “Each team can go for a strategic modifier. Basically, the corporation buys in big either by upping the venue pot, or does a straight cash infusion. If they do that, they get to roll the dice for a combat modifier. I’m also showing . . . that for ColaCorp to even have a chance they’ve got to commit that little carrier group they’ve got offshore outside Song Hua Harbor. The number crunchers tell me then, maybe, you might have the stats to get within reach of a win. But those don’t add up to a theater victory. No way.”

  I wait.

  Then . . .

  “I’m going to get WonderSoft to go all in. We kill everything they’ve got, a total rout, and that’s how we arrive at theater victory and take the India venues along with the rest.”

  “So basically,” he says, burping—he doesn’t excuse himself—“both sides go all in and you’ve got a trap.”

  “Yeah, all in and then the trap.”

  We finish our sandwiches as the Skyliner wallows through the lazy South Pacific yellow afternoon.

  I wipe my mouth with the large starched napkin and drain the last of my draft.

  “Can you use that?” I ask, staring Big Gorilla straight in the eyes.

  Nothing remains on his face, even when he sticks out his hand. “Carter Banks. And yeah, I can do something with that.”

  Inside, deep inside me where no one else can see, I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “So what do you want out of this?” he asks.

  What do I want out of this?

  Those words seem like the words of some other genie. The second genie in recent days. Those words lead to questions I’ve been asking myself since before all this went down. Maybe even questions I’ve been asking my entire life. I sit in my suite as the Skyliner turns over the Malaysian Peninsula. A purple blanket of night presses down on the orange band in the west that is the last of the day. I have until tonight to give Carter Banks a plan on how I’m going to find the spy and recruit the spy, then convince Carter that ColaCorp can win, before he’ll buy heavy on low-priced ColaCorp stock prior to the battle. Then he’ll sell high and buy up the crashing WonderSoft stock. Whoever’s financed Faustus Mercator will not be happy on their lack of return. That might give him something to focus on besides killing me.

  But who is the spy?

  I sit in one of the cigar leather chairs, just listening to the quiet nothing drone of the massive trade jet. Resting. Not even using my eyes to look at anything. Just resting.

  I need this. Or at least my body does. My mind also. But I can’t turn that off.

  The spy has to be a ColaCorp soldier. That could be anyone, even RangerSix. The information used against us has been too situation-specific, often moment-by-moment, up-to-date, real-time info. It’s not some ColaCorp flunky who has access to our preplanning. Whoe
ver it is has to be in on our BattleChat. A live, professional player. Someone I consider a comrade. JollyBoy is still the obvious choice.

  Sometimes the obvious choice is the only choice.

  I ping Kiwi and wait. An hour later, he gets back to me.

  “I want to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth.”

  “You got it, mate. Always have and always will.”

  “Are you a traitor?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, have you been selling us out to WonderSoft?”

  Kiwi pauses, silent, hulking in the darkness of a room that looks like a tool shed.

  “Frankly, Perfect . . .”

  I wait. If he’s lying, he’ll point me at someone else. That’s my lie detector. I’m no interrogator, no detective. I just find my game and run it.

  “You know something, Question?” he says after a long pause, each of us staring across the Internet at the other. “Every time I get killed, it’s ’cause I’m grateful.”

  I watch him, waiting for the lie.

  “You know what I do for a living, mate?” he asks. “I mean after Saturday night matches, you know what I go back to?” His face is angry, almost twisting with pain. Like he’s holding something back. Something that takes all his strength to restrain. Something that’s beating him day by day. Wearing him down.

  I didn’t know. I say nothing.

  “I was a soldier. Got my legs blown off in Indonesia fightin’ the Muzzies. When I got back, they gimme new legs. Best the service could offer. Free medical for the rest of my life. I’m not bitter about that. Lost my legs one balmy afternoon and never looked back. God save the King. But when I got back, they gave me a list of jobs I could do for the rest of my life. Nothing good. No mind. Cleaning offices in Sydney every night is just the same as being a metro tollbooth worker. But ya see, PerfectQuestion, I loved bein’ a soldier, mate. Loved the formations and the parades and the medals. Loved my mates and my guns. But the service says you’ve got to have both legs to keep soldierin’. So they medically retired me, PerfectQuestion. Twenty-four years old and I’m retired for the rest of my life. So you know what I did? I didn’t give up. I looked for another army that’d let me soldier. And I found one. I found an army that would let me fight for ’em. So I love ColaCorp. I love RangerSix. I’d die for them every night because I’m so grateful they let me be a soldier and pay me a wage so I don’t have to stand in the metro at three A.M. while punks coming home from the clubs piss their lives away and write crap on the walls that the public lawyers say is freedom of speech and the college professors say is art. That’s a waste of a life. ColaCorp pays me some money. Enough to come home and pay the utility bills on my da’s old stead. It’s not so much . . . But ColaCorp’s given me more than they’ll ever know. I’d fight for free, if they asked me to.”

  Then he’s silent, staring back at me across the connection with hard eyes.

  “So ask me again, PerfectQuestion. You ask me again if I’m a traitor.”

  I shake my head.

  I don’t need to.

  “You’re not the traitor, Kiwi,” I whisper. “I didn’t think so. But there is one, and I had to make sure you were clear, before I asked for your help. So I need your help.”

  “You got it, mate.” He doesn’t even hesitate. I like that about Kiwi. He’s always all in.

  Chapter 26

  When I talk to RangerSix, I tell him my plan and who I think the traitor is. JollyBoy. He listens without saying a word. Then he says, “Son . . .” He pauses. “You got my blessing. I’ll make the pitch to ColaCorp. I don’t know if they’ll go for it, but it’s better than just sitting back and watching us get slaughtered by WonderSoft. Never did like that clown anyways.”

  I know, or at least I have to believe, RangerSix isn’t the traitor. To me he seems like the last samurai in the world. Maybe all of us have degrees of honor to some extent. But he’s integrity through and through. If you cut him, he’d probably bleed integrity. Whatever that looked like. Some people you just know that about. He’s one of them. Maybe the last one.

  RiotGuurl. I don’t think so. But also, I don’t know for sure because I don’t really know her. She’s professional, competent, and good. And I like her, I think. That clouds things. But, in her defense, she’s been shot down twice because of bad intel. Because of the traitor. Those are marks in her favor, reasons for trust.

  Then there’s the clown.

  The clown being JollyBoy, who I text later and ask to set up an intel station at a highlighted coordinate on the grid map north of Song Hua Harbor.

  “Oh what fun, PerfectQuestioney. A sneak attack right into the spleen of WonderSoft. Remember when we killed everyone at the tower?”

  I did.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it,” says JollyBoy.

  Good times, I agree and end the conversation.

  RiotGuurl answers my next text immediately.

  “Hey, boy.”

  “Hey yourself,” I text. “Up for a bit of fun?”

  “Depends.”

  I write back, “At the briefing, I need you to ignore all the orders about a counterattack through the left flank, and an intel station JollyBoy’s setting up. Okay?”

  “All right . . . why would I do this?”

  “Because I want you to pick up the troops that should be counterattacking and drop them in the center, where all the action’s really going to be. It’s gonna get real hot, so watch out.”

  “I like it hot,” she writes back.

  “Listen.” I decide to level with her and let her in on the plan. “I trust you. I think Jolly’s been selling us out. This is our only chance to win this thing. Okay?”

  “Did RangerSix buy off on this?” she asks after a moment.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then, I’m in.”

  “Thanks.” I don’t know what to write next.

  What’s appropriate?

  Maybe the truth. “You’re the best pilot I’ve ever played with, RiotGuurl. Before it all goes down, I just want you to know that and I’m sorry about trying to hit on you. My life’s been weird and I was confusing respect with attraction.”

  “It’s cool, but what’re you saying?” she writes back.

  “I’m saying I respect your skills. Even if we lose our professional status tonight, I want you to know I think you’re a professional, no matter what.”

  “Thanks, PerfectQuestion. What’s your real name?”

  I stare at her text and all that it could possibly mean.

  Names are personal.

  And . . . what if she is the traitor after all?

  “John Saxon.”

  “It fits. Where are you?” she texts.

  “That’s not important.”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe I’ve been rethinking . . . things.”

  I wait.

  “Maybe after the game, we can meet halfway from wherever you’re at. Maybe we’re even in the same city,” she writes.

  I stare at the words on the screen until they start to blur.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I type, my index finger shaking as I punch the screen on my Petey. “Tell me where you are and I’ll be there. That is, if you still want me to, after the match.”

  She gives me an address in Rome. Italy.

  An hour later, I log back into the Black. I have a scotch beforehand and set another up for the game. Now, as the screen descends through its intro of blood and screams, shadows and flames, I wait, feeling the warm hum of the liquor.

  Courtyard of the Unworthy bleeds across the screen.

  I slew my camera and find the hulking Minotaur, Morgax, standing next to me, smiling. Shadows lengthen as a swollen moon rises in the east over the fading desert. Evil blackbirds come in sudden waves across the dead city, screeching murder, then they’re gone. Before us, stone steps rise to meet the doors to the tower.

  “So we get to the top, then what?” I ask Morgax.

  “Rescue the child and end this abomination,
” he says after a moment.

  “Most people who play Black games like them.”

  “I’m not most people,” says Morgax. The character voice software makes his speech gruff and snorty. “I’m a fan of the source material. I came to clean it up. Or at least that’s what I told myself.”

  “Clean it up?” I ask.

  Over chat I can hear him sigh. His sigh comes out as a painful bullish snort. Then he says, “What’s your real . . . forget it. Sorry about that; I’m not used to playing these kinds of games. Forget it. I don’t need to know your real name. It’s not important. Let’s just say . . . I’ve been a fan of these books, the source material for this world, since I was kid. If I told you how much of a fan, well . . . then you might find out who I am. To put it another way, I teach a small lit course at a big university, among other courses, on this . . . this place. The World of Wastehavens.”

  I stop him. “Enough. Don’t say any more. Someone might be listening in on us and they could use that against you.” I move the Samurai up the steps to the door of the tower and start inspecting the lock.

  “So you’re a fan, and someone made a Black game out of your favorite book and you just had to play it?” I ask. “Except you didn’t really know what a Black game was and now you’re in over your head?” That’s my guess, at least.

  “No, I knew. We get mandatory classes in deviant behavior as part of our teaching credentials. Black games are considered highly deviant. Which they are.”

  “So why are you here?” There seemed to be no visible locking mechanism I could toy with to get us into the tower. I try a few strikes with my bare hands against the door and am rewarded with solid wooden thunks, echoing beyond into an unseen empty space.

  No one answers.

  “Six months ago, I heard someone was going to let this world go live. Use it as source to run a Black game. I couldn’t let it be sullied like that. So I entered. I thought there was a way to save it, and if I’m right, there might actually be.”

  “Why would you do a thing like that? You could get busted. Reeducation sentence. You’d lose your license to teach.”

  For a long moment Morgax says nothing. Our avatars watch the tower.